AMD introduced the Ryzen 8000, a new generation of APUs that appear as an important turning point and are undoubtedly the Sunnyvale giant’s answer to Intel Meteor Lake. We’re in for one of the most exciting and important generational refreshes that AMD has done, not only for what it means in terms of raw power, but also for what it stands for. at the level of specialization.

There is no doubt that AI has become one of the big pillars of the PC industry and that 2024 will be the year it takes off at the general consumer level. AMD saw this reality and therefore did not hesitate to provide its new Ryzen 8000 APU NPU of the new generation which improves work performance on AI-related tasks.

Hardware is important, but software-level support is not far behind. This reality was also another of the big keys that AMD used to define its AI strategy, and it must be acknowledged that Sunnyvale absolutely nailed it, both at the level of support in applications such as creating its own development kit and AI implementation, Ryzen AI softwarewhich will be available at the general level.

AMD Ryzen 8000 APUs are divided into three large blocks at the silicon level

These APUs use a monolithic core design, which means that all its elements are integrated into a single silicon chip with all the advantages that come from it compared to the classic chiplet design. This silicon chip is divided into three large blocks:

• PROCESSOR: based on the Zen 4 architecture and configured with up to 8 cores and 16 threads, 16 MB L3 cache, 8 MB L2 cache and frequencies up to 5.2 GHz thanks to turbo mode.
• GPU: based on the RDNA 3 architecture, the same used by the Radeon RX 7900 XTX and lower, and configured with up to 768 shaders in its most powerful version (Radeon 780M). They have second generation cores for ray tracing acceleration and specialized AI cores.
• NPU: This is a key piece that represents this specialization focused on artificial intelligence. Ryzen 5 8640U APUs and above come with the new generation XDNA NPU.

AMD Ryzen 8000 APUs are compatible with LPDDR5 memory, which translates into more available bandwidth and allows the integrated GPU to reach its full potential. Thanks to the Zen 4 architecture, we find a excellent single wire performanceand the configuration with 8 cores and 16 threads will allow us to play and even work with all guarantees.

The manufacturing node that AMD used in these APUs was that 5nm from TSMCand the maximum TDP varies depending on each family. The HS series has a TDP between 20 and 54 wattsand low consumption models (series U) have a TDP between 15 and 30 watts.

List of models and specifications of the new AMD Ryzen 8000

In total, AMD introduced nine new Ryzen 8000 APUs, which, as you can see in the attached image, are divided into four great series. The Ryzen 9 and Ryzen 7 8000 series have 8 cores and 16 threads, They have a Radeon 780M GPU and include an XDNA NPU. count with 16 MB L3 cache and 8 MB L2 cachewhich leaves us with a total of 24 MB of cache.

The Ryzen 5 8000 series has 6 cores and 12 threads, have a Radeon 760M GPU and have an XDNA NPU, except for the Ryzen 5 8540U, which has a Radeon 740M and lacks a neural processing unit. Have 16 MB L3 cache and 6 MB L2 cache, which leaves us with a total of 22 MB of cache.

Finally, there’s the Ryzen 3 8440U, which has a configuration four cores and eight threads, has a Radeon 740M GPU and no XDNA NPU. It has 8 MB L3 cache and 4 MB L2 cachewhich leaves us with a total of 12 MB of cache.

AI performance: a significant jump

During the presentation, AMD highlighted the improvements made in AI thanks to the new XDNA Neural Processing Unit (NPU). As we can see in the attached image, the previous generation (Ryzen 7040) was equipped with a 10-core NPU that offered 33 TOP performance, while the Ryzen 8040 has 16-core NPU that reaches 39 TOP.

This difference in performance translates into an average improvement in AI performance of 40% compared to the previous generation. If we compare with the Intel Core i9-13900H, we can see that the difference in the general performance of this new generation AMD is very large in gaming (up to 80% higher performance) and in content creation (40% higher performance). it is more discrete in multithreading (only 10% higher performance).

AMD closed the presentation promises up to a threefold performance improvement with the XDNA 2 APU, which will be used in the next-generation Ryzen 9000 APU, codenamed Strix Point. It will be launched sometime in 2024.

Ryzen 8000 APU launch and availability

AMD has confirmed that the first laptops equipped with the new Ryzen 8000 APUs will hit the market during first quarter of 2024and for this launch it will have the support of the most important OEMs in the sector, including names such as ASUS, Razer, Lenovo, HP, Dell and Acer. We don’t have details on possible retail prices, so we’ll have to wait.